Music

These stanzas are roughly drafted in a mixture of pencil and ink on pp. 109–12 of Nbk 11. Differences in the ink and pencil used seem to indicate several stages of composition and revision. No title is unequivocally evident, though what appears to be ‘Mus’ written at the top left of p. 109 may have been intended as ‘Music’ and so suggested the title given to the poem when first published in 1824. A smaller ‘m’ is written beside it and what may be a cancelled ‘M’ at the top of p. 110. Mary made no transcription in either Mary Copybk 1 or Mary Copybk 2, and in 1824 departs substantially from the Nbk 11 draft only in ll. 25 and 29 (see notes below), in each case apparently in order to achieve a finished text where there is a lacuna in the draft. So there is no need to posit the existence of another holograph MS from which she transcribed or with which she supplemented Nbk 11. Music is not dated in 1824 but was included in 1839 among the Poems Written in 1821. A few differences of punctuation apart (for the most important, see note to ll. 28–9), the 1824 and 1839 texts are identical, each composed of 22 lines— comprising the stanzas below beginning ‘I Pant’, ‘Let me drink’ and ‘As the scent’ (in that order), followed by ll. 26–9 (of the present text), then two rows of asterisks to signify an incomplete fourth stanza. This text was reprinted in that form, and among the poems of 1821, in 1840 (p. 299), but unaccountably figures again in the Fragments section at the end of 1840 (p. 319) without date and without either ll. 26–9 or any indication of incompleteness. This second 1840 text—hereafter 1840 (2)—is clearly based on a re-examination of the draft in Nbk 11, as the notes below indicate. It comprises the three complete stanzas of the text as published in 1824/ 1839/1840 but in the order ‘I pant’, ‘As the scent’ 239and ‘Let me drink’, which is also the order adopted in the text offered below. The two uncompleted stanzas, which Mary did not publish, both on p. 110 in Nbk 11 facing the draft of the first stanza, and which are placed below at ll. 7–9, 10–13, might have been inserted elsewhere by S. had he completed them.